Transport for London's Lost Property Office is celebrating its 75th birthday with a public showcase of some of the more unusual items left on the London Underground & London's buses. Weirdly people have left behind (and not claimed) a park bench, WWII gas masks, a stuffed fox, a puffer fish, a lawnmower and even a home vasectomy kit.
Umbrellas are amongst the most common things left behind. However, laast year the most commonly forgotten objects were books (36,852), bags (28,550) and items of clothing (27,174). It was also interesting to see that a quarter of a million pounds worth of luxury watches have been among the office's items. If they're not claimed within three months they go to charity or are auctioned.
The Lost Property Office is at Baker Street, and they make the most of their famous fictional neighbour Sherlock Holmes. The computer system used to log all the lost items is called 'Sherlock'
The Lost Property office manager Julie Haley said that any personal data left on an item will see it kept permanently though, and she advised the public to always check with them.
"I know some people think if they have lost something on public transport they will never get it back," she told Sky News.
"But I would like to encourage them to give us a call. You never know - we might just have it here."
A pair of breast implants were successfully re-united with their owner.
Fortunately I've never left anything much more than a cardigan, jacket and loads of umbrellas behind on the Tube. Funnily enough someone left a pair of designer glasses on a bench at Hammersmith Tube this morning & I hope they made their way back to the owner. Have you ever left something and got it back from the lost property office? What's the weirdest thing that you've found or handed into staff?
I've blogged in the past about great "Wake Me Up At...." stickers which you can stick on your person and hope that some kind soul will wake you up at your Tube station, so you don't fall asleep & end up in Essex or Surrey or Middlesex or other ends of the line. Now the guys who've made them have branched out into badges for night buses:
In theory they're a good idea, but you're not at all as exposed when you're travelling on a bus. At most one other person is likely to see the badge, if they're sitting next to you and it's not like being on the row of seat on the Tube where at least five or six people sitting opposite you would be able to see you nodding off.
However, I do like the badge format for them rather than the stickers. They seem much more drool proof. The badges don't appear to be on the WakeMeUpAt site yet, so I'm guessing you can only get them in shops.
If you manage to grab a picture of someone wearing either a badge or a sticker, please let me know, as I'd love to see if they work. It would be interesting to see how long people have to travel wearing one.
Even something as in your face (quite literally) as the Japanese subway sleep mask didn't work. The passengers let the poor guy sleep on and never woke him. But with badges you look at less like a weirdo and less likely to be part of some art installation or "You've been framed" stunt.
In Cincom Systems, Inc. v. Novelis Corp., --F.3d ---, 2009 WL 3048436 (6th Cir. Sept. 25, 2009), the Sixth Circuit found that a statutory merger not approved by a software licensor triggered a copyright infringement against the remaining entity, a subsidiary of Novelis (formerly Alcan Aluminum).
State law encourages statutory mergers, which are often viewed by M&A lawyers as little more than internal housekeeping or tax planning. Statutory mergers are used for a variety of reasons and often do not require advance notice to shareholders or permission of regulators.
Ohio law deems all property of the merged entity transferred. The Sixth Circuit found that the federal common law governing intellectual property licenses trumped state law. So where a non-exclusive license requires the permission of a copyright owner for any merger or transfer, this language means what it says, giving owners of software a major seat at the table where corporations wish to engage in any mergers or transfers.
The opinion is a good discussion of the tension between state law (facilitating mergers) and federal law (protecting IP owners) - and concludes squarely that federal policy and law trumps state policy on this point. The court notes that it is extending case law from patent cases into the copyright arena.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment and damages of $459,530 (equal to the amount of the initial licensing fee).
Once again, M&A lawyers have to start reading these software license agreements.
In Doss, Inc. v. Yoon Young Im, a case decided by Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York on September 23, 2009, Christie's successfully fended off a claim from a purchaser who'd bought what turned out to be Nazi looted art for $235,000 at a 1991 auction in New York.
The case arose when in 2008, Doss, Inc., the purchaser of a Marie LaurencinPortrait from Christie's tried to sell it through Sotheby's. Sotheby's researched the artwork and found that it had been looted by the Nazis from the well-known Paris art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Sotheby's informed Doss Inc. (the would-be seller) that the artwork was stolen.
Doss then sued Christie's for breach of warranty. The problem is that New York's U.C.C. Section 275 provides a four-year statute of limitations for breach of warranty (claim for breach of warranty must be commenced within four years of tender of delivery of the goods).
Once the four years runs, a seller of stolen goods is off the hook in New York, as far as New York's U.C.C. is concerned, unless some tolling principle, such as fraudulent concealment. New York is a buyer beware state. But it would certainly be surprising if Christie's didn't know what it was selling when it put the work up for auction in 1991.
Auction houses and museum have been peddling the fiction that Hitler's art looting was not "discovered" until the mid-1990's. But the Nurember trials covered these crimes on the front pages of the New York Times and such authors as Janet Flanner covered Nazi art looting activities in depth in an extraordinary three-part series in the New Yorker magazine in 1947. Museums and auction houses would prefer to forget about such works as David Roxan & Ken Wanstall's groundbreaking report based on the Art Looting Intelligence Unit's Reports - The Rape of Art: The Story of Hitler's Plunder of the Great Masterpieces of Europe (Cowan-Mc Gill New York 1964). Flanner's accounts of artworks being uncovered in salt mines together with gold teeth removed from Jewish corpses is a chilling reminder of how the Nazis intertwined looting and murder.
The truth is, museums, private owners and auction houses have been waiting for a couple of generations of Jews to die so that they can safely peddle and display the looted artworks held in their collections.
Christie's didn't know it was stolen in 1991 when they sold it? Horsefeathers!
Bad news if you want to use the Victoria Line from 9.30pm on the 5th October as RMT members will walk out for 24 hours.
They claim that management have gone back on an agreement to reduce the number of return journeys a driver has to make in one day.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, said: "This underhand attempt to extract an extra 20% from the working day out of our members has provoked this action on the Victoria Line and we would urge the management side to re-open serious negotiations to resolve this issue."
The RMT said that since 2003 there was an agreement for Victoria Line drivers that five rounder turns - where train drivers make five return journeys in a day - would be minimized. For more on this see the BBC
There's a chance it might be called off, as it does sound from that quote that he's willing to talk.
Tired of your blue generic travel card wallet? Want something that's more personalised or important to you? Now you can get wallets, and also mugs, mouse mats, coasters & T-Shirts with a part of the London Underground map that's special to you on it. Including the river! Thanks to London Transport Museum with the click of a mouse you can grab part of the Tube map and get in printed on a range of products.
Last night they launched their "RailOrder" series (see what they've done there). They're part of a number of lovely items which let you carry a bit of London Transport around with you. At the moment the travel card wallets don't seem to be on the site, but the samples I saw last night looked really hard wearing and like they'd withstand several years worth of swiping.
The launch also unveiled some "Routemaster Retro" products. Travel bags, wash bags, wallets and shoulder bags, which have been inspired by the Routemaster upholstery - or moquette
There's even a furniture collection, if you love the feel of sitting on Tube & bus seats so much! I'm told they don't come with added chewing gum and crisp crumbs.
It's great to see the Museum offering items like this. Particularly the personalised map products. I'm told they'll be looking at ways to increase the personalisation even more in the future. It might not extend to changing the names of the stations, but it wouldn't take a big stretch to allow people to personalise messages to the Tube stations of their choice. "Nearly home" or "Back to the office" or "Great pub stop", would make them even more personalised.
Update:Alex Gollner's been playing around with the tool and has come up with some nice looking T shirts really zooming in on certain intersections. See if you can guess where they are.
Sometimes I think that art on the London Underground ought to be sponsored by brands. The piece below would be a perfect candidate for Specsavers.
Even if you had time to read the stories on this poster, you'd need to have incredibly good eyesight or certainly need a pair of glasses at the end of it.
Similar to the project where a photographer has taken pictures of staff from each station on the Tube system, staff on the Central tell small stories.
"Central line staff guided Sarah, introducing her to their colleagues and recounting personal tales. These initial conversations highlighted a very human desire to communicate through storytelling.
Together these stories offer the reader a glimpse into the rich imaginations, cultures and experiences of the London Underground staff who you may well encounter on your next Central line journey."
Certainly more interesting than hearing them saying "Stand clear of the doors" or "The next station is Snaresbrook".
In Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain, found here the Ninth Circuit dealt with a case of first impression. Where Germany stole an artwork, and Spain bought the stolen artwork, does the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA) make Spain immune from suit in a US federal court? The case arose from a Nazi taking a Pissarro from Claude Cassirer's mother in Nazi Germany in 1939.
The legal question presented was whether the expropriation exception to sovereign immunity in Section 1605(a)(3) of the FSIA applied to a sovereign entity that was not alleged to have taken property in violation of international law.
Spain bought a collection from a Swiss-based Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza and started a museum based on the collection.
This is similar to the arrangement Austria has with the Leopold Museum. The Leopold's collection is now being researched at the insistence of the Jewish Community of Vienna, which held protests and roped off the entire Leopold Museum in yellow "crime scene" tape.
When you buy from the Swiss the type of art that Nazis liked to loot, you really ought to check the provenance. Shame on Spain. Let's hope they set up a commission to publicly investigate the collection and give back the things that have been stolen from murdered Jews.
Paul Waugh from The Evening Standard blog said of the Thames' disappearance: "I can't for the life of me think what possessed the TfL people to consider this. Did they really think that Londoners are so stupid that they imagine the strip of blue is a new Tube line? Did they not have any feeling for the history of the beautiful Harry Beck design? Did they not stop to think that actually many Londoners divide the city into north and south of the river and therefore it is essential to any map?
Anyway, Bojo has saved the day. I'm told that he was amazed at what had been proposed while he was away and has now ordered that the Thames should be reinstated as soon as practicable. Apart from anything else, Boris wants to increase the river's role as a transport link with the Underground network."
At the moment there's nothing on TfL's website to confirm this. Although Boris Johnson has just Tweeted that it will be back. There's also no word as to whether the zones will return. But by all accounts by December the river will be back at a cost of £80,000.
Sorry I haven't done these for a while, but here's a collection of Tube roundels not on the London Underground. I must thank everyone over the years who's taken the trouble to spot these little blighters "in the wild" away from their natural homes in London.
First off a roundel with a word that you certainly wouldn't normally associate with the Tube taken by Pete from the Londoneer
It's from an English school in Katowice (pronounced Cat-O-Vit-Sa appararently) in Poland which he visited over the weekend.
A little closer to home - Hull - was the following spot from Nick Cooper taken over the Bank Holiday weekend:
We cross the pond with the next couple:
"This one's on the front of a gallery on Marcy Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Note the adobe and vigas -- typical southwestern U. S. architecture. Not the kind of place you'd expect to find the Underground roundel." Nicely spotted by M. J.
Here's a spot from Middlesboro, Kentucky, kindly sent to me by Lisa A
Finally we go down under to Sydney, with a spot from Paul Holloway:
He said "I spotted this recent when I was on holiday in Sydney, Australia. Sydney doesn't have an underground metro system (at least not yet), but some of the stations on the central loop are below ground. Wynyard is one such station, which is where I took the picture of the Concourse Bar. I didn't have time to go in the bar unfortunately, but I'm guessing that the use of the roundel is likely to be a nod to the fact the bar is in a below-ground railway station. It didn't look particularly well patronised!"
Thanks to you all and if you'd like to see more of Roundels not on Underground they're here. If you spot any in the flesh on your travels, please send them in to me and I'll blog the best in a future post.
There's been quite a major change on the new London Underground map. Blech took a photo and said he thinks "it's the most radical change it's had in at least one decade, possibly even two. Has someone been reading Maxwell Roberts?"
Blech said:
"Since March, the map has lost:
* the river (no map since 1924 has omitted it, I believe) * the zone structure * the East London line buses (it's now a line, "under construction") * walk distances * info boxes in the map body * limited-time junctions (eg Kennington, Woodford)
It's also gained more stations marked as interchanges (eg Paddington, West Hampstead) while Imperial Wharf is also there ("opening late 2009"). If it wasn't for the wheelchairs, this would be the most minimal pocket map ever."
There's already a lot of discussion about this on Blech's Flickr thread. version-3-point-1 said it's "an attempt to make it less cluttered, the Gods from on high told us! LUL opened up a forum for us staff to offer feedback and as far as I've heard, quite a few of my colleagues have made nothing but complaints!"
What do you think? Is it more helpful now it's less cluttered? What about the loss of the river? And the loss of the zones, is this a help or hindrance?
From today, Friday 11th September, a new collection of posters will be unveiled on the London Underground. ELLE are working together with TfL to celebrate the 25th anniversary of London Fashion Week. They've got designers who've helped shape British fashion – from Paul Smith and Christopher Bailey to Henry Holland and Naomi Campbell – to create the one of posters which will be at central London Tube stations this month.
John Ball, Director of Strategy and Service Development for London Underground said:
"We're very proud of our tradition of putting great design at the heart of our organisation. This includes the iconic and world-class design of our stations, signage, maps, typeface and posters. We have always been committed to new ideas and leading design."
Five of the posters have been made into covers for ELLE magazine and these collector's issues can be bought at from WHsmith and Selfridges. More details here.
For me it was a shame that the posters weren't a bit more London focussed or had a few more nods to the Tube. But I love the one above from Paul Smith with the tangled hangers looking a little like a mad Tube map.
Speaking of fashion on the Underground, mondoagogo had a great spot the other day of a person who seemed to get her footwear to match the Tube seats.
For a second I thought they were those shoes made out of moquette, but they're just an amazingly good match!
Remember the animals on the Underground - animals that have been "found" in the Tube map. Well, this got regular contributer & commenter Jon Justice thinking about whether you could see anything else in the London Underground map. Letters for example.
He was sitting with a friend on the Tube and she insisted that she could see letters - almost a whole alphabet.
"So we ended up sitting down in the pub trying to trace out the whole alphabet. It's harder than it sounds. As long as you mix upper and lower case, you can get most letters, but some we just couldn't get at all. B, C and O eluded us entirely (at least not without making them huge) and we're not at all happy with A or S and we had to cheat and use the DLR to get a G. The M is pretty ropey too." he said.
I think it's a very good attempt- although I'm surprised they couldn't get a better S! Do you think you could find the missing letters? Or have you seen anything appearing in the Tube map if you stare at it too much?
There's been a couple of Londoners in the news lately who've been making moves to get some of the system's 40 disused London Underground stations opened. If you're lucky you might be able to get on the odd tour of Aldwych station, but they're few and far between.
Adrian Davies lives close to the old "Brompton Road" Tube and believes there's a case for opening it, and not just from a historical viewpoint. He told the BBC in the film below, "While this station saw little passenger traffic in the 1930s times have changed. There are a lot of tourists, a lot of shoppers, I think it would be a busy station today and take some of the pressure off other stations on the line."
Ajit Chambers is also on a mission to get stations re-opened. However, he thinks they would make great tourist attractions. He is also feature in the BBC's film above. TimeOut spoke to him about his plans and he said
"I have created a company that is planning to open up the 26 disused ghost stations underneath London as 'tourist adventures'. So far my proposal has been very warmly accepted by the Mayor of London; the transport commissioner has handed it to the MD of the London Underground. I have offered to raise the capital myself to start the pilot station as an operational proof of concept and am waiting for the Mayor of London to give me the go-ahead to send my survey team down into the first station."
He seems quite determined and I wish him luck with his endeavours - which you can read in full here. Although I don't think he should hold his breath. The party line from TfL isn't in favour (warm acceptance from the Mayor aside). Howard Collins from London Underground said "To make them safe, even for visits, requires a lot of resources and special arrangements.
"Our focus is upgrading the system. We are spending billions of pounds of investment: upgrading with new trains; adding air-con trains on some lines and working on track signalling."
What do you think? Would you like to see some of these stations restored to their former glory? Do you think it's worth the expense? Which stations re-opening could actually help take pressure off other stations in the network?
You are an artist, an architect, a photographer or anyone working in the creative arts. You'd like to use works you've created in a career retrospective, autobiography, part of your portfolio. You are writing a biography of someone who works in the creative arts. Do you have to pay to license full color images of the works?
The leading case is Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 448 F.3d 605 (2d Cir. 2006), involving a book on the Grateful Dead. In that case, images reduced and put on a timeline in a book about the Grateful Dead were held to be fair use, even though the publisher tried to license the works and was rejected.
But what about large color reproductions? A recent fair use case from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by District Judge Bayleson, Warren Publishing v. Spurlock, 2009 WL 2412542, --- F. Supp.2d --- (August 4, 2009) tackles the issue in a thoughtful, thorough and monster-sized decision.
Basil Gogos illustrated cover art for monster movie magazines such as Creepy and Eerie. Spurlock wanted to write a biography of Gogos and show images of his poster art.
The decision goes into issues regarding the work-for-hire doctrine, the Copyright Act of 1909, the bankruptcy of the original publishers, battles of the experts, in all of the case's horrific details.
In the end, the use of full-color and large images of background art were found to be fair use in an artist's biography. The original magazines were about promoting Bela Lugosi and Dark Shadows, not Basil Gogos.
For those who claim that artists have been taken advantage of by greedy corporations who keep their out-of-print content under lockdown, this is a clear, resounding victory and a well-reasoned decision.
An important factor in the court's decision was the publisher's failure to exploit the coffee-table market for a perior of 22 years. In the age of Google, the culture of "use it or lose it" is taking hold.
CBS Outdoor are looking for brands to take on sponsorship of the 35 mini stages for licensed buskers on the London Underground.
The spots are available from November and apparently can be tailed to suit the sponsor. Specific music genres or themes can be built into the sets or branding can be expanded above ground or linked to other media activity.
Donna Price, from CBS Outdoor, told Media Week it offers the chance for clients "align their brands with music culture and to play their part in brightening up journeys for passengers".
It would be great to see some imaginative sponsorship of these sites and I wonder if one brand will take it on or if it will be open to many?
A while back there was talk of labels experimenting by getting buskers to play certain songs. Perhaps something could be introduced where even commuters can decide what they'd like played at each station.
Professor William Patry, copyright's most prolific scholar and a bit of a folk devil himself, has come out with a new book that burns with the ambition of making us rethink copyright from the ground up. According to Patry, countries like Korea and Japan are far ahead of the US in technological innovation and embrace of the internet to create lucrative consumer-driven markets for copyrighted content.
If you want to know why your DVD player doesn't have a "record" button, Patry provides the best, most entertaining, and lively explanation I've ever seen.
Patry's erudition and lively writing style make for a brisk and entertaining read. His examples are interesting and compelling -and his discourses on metaphor are quite brilliant. Patry is at his best in cheerfully skewering corporate oligopolists who have successfully lobbied for laws that destroy technical innovation.
Patry plays Marc Antony to Jack Valenti's Caesar: Valenti was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America and a genius lobbyist. Valenti branded consumers as "pirates" and "thieves" for doing things like skipping commercials and mustered up populist outrage in Congress in order to grab cash and control over content for his oligopolist clients. Patry attacks these "folk devils" invented by Valenti and the "moral panics" he created and then cashed in on. Patry shows pretty convincingly that Hollywood and the RIAA have thoroughly misbehaved.
If you are interested in the debates over the past, present and future of copyright law, this is a terrific, unabashedly partisan book. Although Patry says we need to rethink copyright from the ground up as a privilege that is a creature of the legislature and a servant of the public good, I didn't find any concrete prescriptions for doing so. Patry is Senior Counsel to Google, but his book and the blog discussing his book have prominent disclaimers warning against attributing Patry's views to Google. But Patry's views are Google-friendly, to say the least and it would be pretty surprising if Google did not wholeheartedly embrace his views.
One concrete proposal that Patry supports is having the Obama Administration back a broadband initiative that would increase access and speed for consumers - essentially building a national online highway.
To bring home his point, Patry points to Korea and Japan and cites a study showing that "at this rate, it will take the United States more than 100 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in Japan".
This is after an entire book full of Patry blasting copyright owners for using dubious statistics, histrionic metaphors and "folk devils". Valenti would have liked Patry's conjuring this Asian menace - it's the same menace Valenti relied on.
Whether you agree or disagree with Patry, it's a thought-provoking book and likely to be influential with the U.S. judiciary. Despite the disclaimers, it's likely to be taken as a road map for lobbying Washington by technology companies currently shut out of lucrative markets by the content oligopolies.
Patry has created a blog to discuss his book found here. Hopefully this new blog will be a home to the lively and spirited debate that Patry is famous for.
The Copyright Office has a useful tutorial for those who wish to file copyrights electronically. The tutorial is here and here. The Copyright Office's website www.copyright.gov has a number of free, downloadable publications explaining how to register copyrights, what qualifies as a copyrightable work, and how to answer many of the basic copyright questions one is likely to confront.
Electronic filing is a great advance. It still takes a long time to receive an actual copyright registration certificate. For impending litigation, a registration certificate can be expedited. This procedure is known as "special handling" and costs $685.
As a U.S. author, unless you've got a copyright registration certificate (or the Register of Copyrights has denied you one) you generally can't sue in federal court. You can register after an infringement, but there are big disadvantages for waiting until you've been ripped off.
Unless you register your copyrights early, you may not be entitled to "statutory damages" and attorneys fees. When a copyright owner has failed to timely register, it puts the owner at a great disadvantage in obtaining compensation for copyright infringements.
Registering copyrights, registering license agreements, and registering transactions involving copyrights is extremely important. The news is full of transactions gone bad because transactional attorneys did not seem to understand the meaning or scope of licensing agreements.
Is this button for when staff on the London Underground feel themselves going a bit goth? Or for when they see too many Emos on the Tube?
This photo taken by Rhys Isterix got me and a lot of other people on Twitter, thinking. Someone must know what it's really for. So please let us know otherwise I'll just have visions of seeing a Punk reset button, or an Indie reset button at certain stations on the network.
People living in Golders Green have created a series of walks about what their suburb means to them to tie in with the London Transport Museum's latest temporary exhibition Suburbia that opens on Oct 15th.
Golders Green was apparently the first Tube-created suburb in 1907 when the green fields of Golders Green were transformed by the coming of the Tube.
The locals have created three walks along the themes of tasty places to eat, places of reflection and green spaces that highlight the diversity of their community today and what makes it unique.
Free guided tours are happening from 8th September, (bookable online or over the phone on 0207 565 7298), which start at Golders Green London Underground Station. There are pdf self-guided walks that can be downloaded from the London Transport Museum's website.
There will also be an interactive map that people can add their photos to, coming soon.
We've had many a discussion about people putting make up on the London Underground. Commenters on this blog generally aren't wild about it. But what about nail clippings? What's acceptable "grooming behaviour" on the Tube?
Zoe and Carolyn broadcast a podcast last week - 2peaspodcast - where they discussed what people did on the Tube and public transport. Zoe made the great point that people seem to think they're in a bubble that makes them invisible when they travel.
Have a listen at about 6 minutes onwards & let us have your thoughts. Is it better if people apologise or look slightly furtive? Is nail clipping or filing worse then make up because "deposits" are left behind? Is there something about the noise that makes it bad?
Do you think TfL will or should start up some signs about "bathroom habits" on the Tube? It's already happening in Japan.
Fed up with your blue plastic Oyster card? Someone over at Etsy has produced some alternative Oyster cards covered in wood and mirrored plastic. When I first looked at them, I thought that they'd gone down the dissolving Oyster card route and inserted the chip in the new cards.
But it's not the case. The Etsy seller says "Due to its magnetic functionality, the casing does not affect the function of the card in any way and so can be topped up and swiped just like any regular card. Each card comes with its unique ID included for registration as is accepted at every underground cashier desk I have ever been to."
Surprised no one has thought of doing this before and I love how they're scratchproof, as my Oyster card has really been through the wars. Probably worth getting one while they're hot, as it might only be a matter of time, before Transport for London say "down with this sort of thing", as they did with the Oyster card wands!